


Triangular

by ariadnes_string



Category: Merlin (BBC)
Genre: 3.12, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-03
Updated: 2010-12-03
Packaged: 2017-10-13 12:24:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/137321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariadnes_string/pseuds/ariadnes_string
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Missing scene for 3.12. In which there is kissing and cuddling, but only of the most manly and chivalric sort. (Merlin/Gwaine, Arthur)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Triangular

“Well, at least one of us knows how to survive in the woods,” Gwaine said as he came back into the clearing, holding the limp rabbit triumphantly before him.

Merlin had been kneeling, fussing over the bandage on Arthur’s leg, but he looked up at the words, breaking into one of those open smiles that made something in Gwaine’s stomach tumble and flip.

“Watch it,” Merlin said, “I wasn’t born and bred in a castle, you know. I know my way around a coney.”

“Yeah?” Gwaine grinned back . “Prove it.”

He strode over to Merlin, intending to dump the rabbit unceremoniously in his lap. But the boy reached up at just the right moment, and their fingers touched as Gwaine handed it over. Gwaine forced himself not to tangle their hands together, not to hold on tight.

Arthur glowered at them from his awkward sprawl on the forest floor, managing to look both wretched and supercilious at the same time.

++++++

Merlin skinned and gutted the rabbit as deftly as any village lad, and Gwaine sharpened enough sticks with his sword to put together a makeshift spit. An hour later they had freshly roasted meat—the first hot meal any of them had seen in days.

A meal that Arthur wouldn’t eat.

Gwaine sympathized: the prince had set a punishing pace for them all day, and the wound had to be aching. At the moment, Arthur looked like the best he was hoping for from the evening was to neither throw up nor pass out in a particularly undignified way. But it was making Merlin frantic.

He coaxed and prodded, offering this piece of meat and that, until Gwaine was sure that if Arthur had been feeling any stronger he would have cuffed his servant roundly about the head.

The situation was beginning to set Gwaine’s teeth on edge.

He considered himself an amiable man; the dangerous situations in which he so often found himself were hardly ever of his own making—he didn’t think. But these two made Gwaine want to hold a knife to somebody’s throat. He just wasn’t sure exactly whose. Perhaps some random innkeeper’s, until he gave them warm beds for the night and enough venison stew to round out the hollows in Merlin’s cheeks. Perhaps Arthur Pendragon’s, for taking Merlin’s peerless loyalty for granted, and for sucking them all into his determination to shore up his father’s increasingly shaky stranglehold on the crown.

Quite possibly Merlin’s own—pressing blade to his neck until Merlin looked away from his prince for once and did something sensible like joining Gwaine in hightailing it as fast as possible away from soon-to-be-embattled Camelot.

But, since he was an amiable man, Gwaine forswore such acts of violence. Instead, he fixed Arthur with a glare that was only half-mocking, and said, “Sire, you have dealt my honor a mortal blow.”

“Hmm?” Arthur peered at him blearily.

“By refusing to eat my rabbit. Which I pursued for many hours in this perilous forest. Is this the courtesy you show your subjects—scorning their tribute?”

“What are you on about, Gwaine?” Arthur sounded so weary Gwaine almost regretted needling him. But not quite. “It’s been a long day and I’m just—“

But then the prince looked around, and seemed, for once, to take in the expression of hopeless anxiety in Merlin’s eyes.

“But you are quite right.” Arthur rallied enough to adopt Gwaine’s tone of ironic formality. “I neglect my office. Let me partake of this hard-won coney.”

He picked up the piece of meat that Merlin had been trying to force on him and took a bite. He chewed slowly, and, although it seemed to be an effort, swallowed it down.

Merlin sighed audibly, and Gwaine grudgingly admitted that, on occasion, Arthur’s grace might equal his courage.

++++++

The prince fell into a restless sleep soon after.

Gwaine propped himself up against a tree, sword loose in his hand, and watched Merlin watching Arthur. The boy had given over his jacket to the prince again, and was sitting near their tiny fire, chin on his drawn-up knees, arms wrapped around his shins for warmth.

“Try to sleep,” Gwaine said. “It’s no good exhausting yourself. I’ll wake you if he needs you.”

Merlin grunted some kind of protest, but then seemed to concede the wisdom of the words. He eased himself onto his side, tucked an arm under his head, and curled into himself tighter than ever, a strange spiky ball of elbows and knees and ears.

A squirming ball--one that was clearly having difficulty getting comfortable on the hard ground. The sight tugged at every string in Gwaine’s tender heart.

“Cold?” he ventured.

“No,” Merlin grumbled. “Yes.”

Gwaine chuckled, and shifted nearer. He put a hand on Merlin’s bony hip.

“Oi, Master Hedgehog, uncurl a minute.”

“No. G’way.” Merlin tried to bury his head deeper into the crook of his elbow. “Not a hedgehog,” he added, though he did sound remarkably like some disgruntled woodland creature. “Just bloody cold.”

“Come on,” Gwaine said. “I need to check something.” He dug his fingers into the crease of the joint and tickled.

“Not fair!” Merlin unfolded with a start, twisting around until he lay on his back, gazing up at Gwaine. The firelight caught the lean lines of his face, the incongruous richness of his mouth. “What’s so important that you need to check?”

“Just this,” Gwaine said. And he ran the pad of his thumb along the lush curve of Merlin’s lower lip.

He heard the breath catch in Merlin’s throat—not shock, but something else entirely. The sound gave Gwaine all the courage he needed. He bent down and sent his tongue over the same path, exploring the dry skin, finding it a little chapped, but wonderfully soft for all that.

With another little strangled sound, Merlin reached for him, grabbed a handful of Gwaine’s hair and pulled him down hard. Then his mouth was covering Gwaine’s, sloppy, hungry, demanding.

It was everything Gwaine had imagined it might be—and saints forgive him for the many times that he had imagined just this. Merlin kissed with the passion, the intensity, that Gwaine had always suspected lay just beneath his gentle awkwardness.

But there was something more there, too—the suggestion of things that Gwaine had never imagined. On the edges of his awareness, Gwaine could sense a fierceness, almost a wildness, some capacity held barely in check. Curious, wondering, he chased that shrouded power, driving his tongue deep into Merlin’s mouth, tasting wood smoke and rabbit, pushing his hands up under Merlin’s shirt, feeling the warm flesh beneath.

Under him, Merlin responded, a jumble of bony limbs and questing fingers, a soft mouth. The chilly forest seemed to disappear around them, until there was only this, this heat.

On the other side of the fire, someone groaned.

“Mm…” A fretful whimper, merely, or perhaps the beginning of someone’s name.

Merlin pulled away instantly and started to scramble up. But Gwaine put a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll go,” he said.

The prince had thrown off Merlin’s jacket and was shifting restlessly, as if trying to get warm. Sighing, Gwaine retrieved it, crouched down to tuck it back over Arthur’s shoulders, and tried very hard to hate him: for his arrogance and boundless self-conviction; for his unwavering belief in the privileges of rank; and truly, above all, for ending what had been turning into the best kiss of Gwaine’s life.

Yet, like most of Gwaine’s attempts at hatred, this one failed. Pain was a great leveler of men, and at the moment, Arthur looked like any injured youth, face haggard and creased in misery.

“Easy now, boyo,” Gwaine murmured, voice gentling despite his best intentions. He brushed some of the sweat-damp hair off Arthur’s forehead, a little startled by the warmth of the skin under his hand.

“He’s feverish again,” he whispered to Merlin, who had come up next to him. “I’m not surprised, given the way he was pushing himself today.”

“No,” Merlin said. “It’s the wound. It’s starting to go bad—I could see when I dressed it.”

Beneath the worry in Merlin’s voice, Gwaine thought he could hear something else. Guilt, perhaps. It puzzled him. Infection was a common hazard of all wounds—nothing that could be Merlin’s fault.

Between them, Arthur shivered but did not wake, the thin jacket clearly doing nothing to assuage the chill. Merlin smoothed a hand over his back. “I wish we had a blanket,” he said mournfully.

And something in Gwaine surrendered, stopped trying to fight the situation, and started trying to mend it. “We might not need one,” he said, closing his hand over Merlin’s and tugging a little. “Go on—lie down.”

Merlin tilted his head quizzically, but obeyed, gingerly settling himself facing the prince. Arthur, as if sensing the needed warmth, nuzzled towards him, tucking his head into the crook of Merlin’s shoulder as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Oddly satisfied by the sight, Gwaine lay down along Arthur’s back, pressing in as close as he could without disturbing the injured leg. He could feel the strong line of muscle through the prince’s shirt, but also the unnatural heat of fever.

Just out of Gwaine’s line of sight, Merlin huffed a short, surprised laugh. “He’s going to be furious when he wakes up,” he said.

“We’ll just tell him it was a dream,” Gwaine replied, and on impulse reached over Arthur until he met Merlin’s answering fingers, twining into his.

“A good dream,” Merlin said, resting their joined hands on Arthur’s hip. “Not a bad dream at all.”


End file.
